October 2013

I am sat in bed, under the duvet, looking out of the window at the drizzle and the mist. If I was Paul Simon I’d be writing a very fine song about it I’m sure. However, I am not: I am eating yesterday’s apple crumble on account of that old adage ‘feed a cold’, so swings and roundabouts.

It’s not good news because I have recipes to cook, write and shoot for this week’s deadline – there’s one below, just to show I have been getting on with it – and it’s not good news because the weather has become wet and dull. Wet isn’t good as it means botrytis on the grapes and dull isn’t good as it means little more ripening for the grapes. It means the grapes should be picked asap.

This would be fine if (a) I wasn’t laid up with a bad cold and (b) the person who I bought 180 crates for picking the grapes into had delivered them any time in the month since they were paid for.

Newly acquired crates arrive from elsewhere on Tuesday. Wednesday is forecast as heavy rain all day; Thursday is the soonest day we can pick.

And then you wonder…should they stay on longer in the hope of one last dose of sunshine…if it comes, you get more sugars and the likelihood of better quality wine, but you risk losing more and more…and if the sun doesn’t arrive, for nothing.

Twenty five years ago, I headed to Lyon, with a couple of friends, via a few days idleness in Paris, to pick grapes. I’m still not sure how we found out, pre-internet, that you should head to the youth hostel in Lyon and wait until the vineyard owners came with their vans to pick you up. Dozens of us were there for the same reason – from Brazil to Basildon. You might wait a day or a fortnight for the vans, depending on the same balance of sunshine, rain, sugars and rot. That time waiting in the youth hostel was a festival of Orangina and table tennis. It was an pleasureable as it sounds.

When the sun shone it was Orangina and five a side outside, when rainy and at night it was table tennis and beer. A single table, winner stays on. In between, the occasional astonished watching of French tv, openmouthed at what passed for acceptable in the world of French music, followed by a visit over the motorway to the Carrefour to be openmouthed at what passed (back then) for cheese in the UK.

I now understand a little better why that wait might have been a fortnight or a day.

Two semi-relevant thoughts passed through my mind recently. Had I been born to wealthy parents I may have made my living at table tennis, as I was talented at it in a way I have most definitely not been at anything since. I stopped playing when I was 13. Two years later, I left school to take a job with the local council as a wages clerk. It almost killed me. Life felt like a box of wooden walls, each of which was moving very slowly inwards. An eventful few months resulted in me returning to school to do A levels. By ‘do A levels’ I mean play pool and drink and leave 3 years later with an E and an O. It recently occurred to me that if I’d stuck with that job I could have retired by now and be doing what I’m doing with the benefit of a large pension rather than be quite so concerned about the loss of some of the harvest. Hmmm.

Most things are much less pernickity than grapes. The autumn olive (with its small red berries, above) can be picked from early Oct until late November, depending on how sweet you want them. They are delicious whenever, just differently so. For once, the akebia has decided to fruit, and very conveniently it splits its pod (see above) and presents itself, just so. There is no guesswork to be done. Inside, a cool melon flavoured pulp – very good it is too – and you get to spit those little pips out, most satisfyingly.

Peaches too. 100 odd from the single most productive tree. Catch it rather than pick it, ideally. It should smell like heaven for a week or so before its perfect moment. And it should be more of a drink than food: wear a napkin and old shoes when you eat it.

Lovage is one of my favourite plants. The leaves are like green vegetable stock – one or two, sliced finely, in a soup or stew is all you need to bottom it out nicely. It sits somewhere between celery and celeriac flavourwise, which is a rather fine place to be. Its seeds are perhaps even finer. Like sweet cicely seeds, they have a very brief window of viability – they have to find an earthy home quicky and germinate ready to grow the following year or their chance is gone. I sow a few for new plants, but most I pick for the kitchen. They were made to sit next to cucumber. See that picture below..its a cucumber martini. It is cooler than the larder in my dad’s house (he was tighter than a submarine door).

Everything in this martini should be completely cold – keep the vodka in the freezer and chill everything else well before making it. The lovage sounds like it might be weird but it really is the perfect thing. Even if you hate lovage, give it a go. You can always swill it down and make another without. A few borage flowers floating add beauty and a little extra nibble of cucumber.

Push the cucumber through a juicer, or if you don’t have one, blitz it in a blender, then strain through muslin. To make a sugar syrup, dissolve 150g of caster sugar in 150ml water over a low heat, stirring constantly. Chill until using. Shake all the ingredients together, with a little crushed ice if you like, and serve. And get ready to make another, because you’ll want one.